It has been a challenging week. I received radiation on Wednesday, however, the cough and breathing concerns continued to worsen. My sinuses worsened on Wednesday, so I had a sinus endoscope procedure on Thursday.
I awoke during the night very nauseated - the five consecutive radiation treatments have caught up with me again and the nausea and fatigue have returned. Since I was awake, I checked my e-mail and my trusted family doctor had emailed me at 11 PM last night to inform me that gram negative rods were growing out on the cultures from the scope. Gram negative rods are bacteria that can be highly dangerous to the immune compromised patient - some gram negative infections can kill in less than 24 hours. Included in the gram negative rod family is pseudomonas, which can be a life-threatening infection for people like me. I have battled it in the past and it is a formidable foe.
So this morning, my family doctor and infectious disease doctor decided to have me desensitized to another antibiotic - an oral one- to take while we wait on the lab to identify the gram negative bacteria (and we all know how many times the lab fails to provide vital answers to us). If pseudomonas or other bacteria are identified over the weekend that are not sensitive to the arsenal of antibiotics that I am taking, then I will be admitted to ICU for "big gun" IV antibiotics.
I arrived at the cancer center where I had my blood drawn and they installed a heparin lock in my arm so that I could go over to radiation without the IV pole. My counts were too low today, so radiation was canceled. My body probably embraced the break as it fights this infection.
Please pray for this infection to clear without a hospital admission to ICU. Please pray that the nausea and fatigue from the radiation will improve. Please pray that the radiation is beating back my foe, leukemia. Please pray that my breathing and cough will improve.
1 comment:
Prayer going on right now and will continue for you.
Kathy b
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